Saturday, June 29, 2013

Did you ever notice...

...that the Supreme Court is defending us from the tyranny of the
majority when they rule the way we like, but they're overriding the manifest will of the
people when they don’t?

This goes for liberals and conservatives, mind you. "Judicial activism" more often than not is just shorthand for "I didn't agree with the ruling," and that's cool, but be honest with yourself and come out and say it.

There will be partying in the conservative streets if some democratically-enacted laws are struck down. "Oh, Tam!" I hear, "But those are bad laws!" Exactly.

15 comments:

I think that's funny too, the hand wringing that goes on from one side to the other. It's tough being in the middle, my hands wring anytime either side talks too much. Then I remember that the vast majority of people have minimal grounding in critical thinking, deep self-reflective thought, logic, history, or legal precedent.

I remember that, because they whine and complain about "judicial activism", and yet whenever I read a SCOTUS ruling, regardless or whether I find it politically appealing, I almost always agree with that ruling. Because it turns out, in my just and level head, I can't help but be impressed with the deep grounding in legal precedent, history, and political understanding those nine justices have.

I don't want to sound negative, but I feel most people are too stupid to actually understand the rulings or the law. Most let emotion govern virtually all of their reactions and decisions.

RevolverRob --> not stupid. Ignorant. Ignorant of the court's proper role, of the facts of the case, and/or the relevant law.

Tam: "Judicial activism" more often than not is just shorthand for "I didn't agree with the ruling,"

Agreed, which is precisely why I try to limit my use of the term to cases where the judge(s) clearly went beyond what the facts and/or the law allowed. Such as the ridiculous charge of malign motives made in the majority opinion against those who voted for DOMA, or the absurd redefinition of "public use" in the Kelo case a couple of years ago.

It is a sad state of affairs when the whim of one black-robed eunuch, aka Justice Anthony Kennedy, decides whether or not this or that is double plus ungood, or not. But on a bright note, my new Ruger SR22 (with purple frame, suck it, haters)is, as you kids say, "da bomb". Not literally, I hope, but a good gun so far. And there is pulled pork to eat, and Guinness to drink, so we will abide.

In my lifetime the only supreme court ruling that I've vehemently been opposed to was the upholding of the individual mandate in the obamacare thingy. For the most part, they get it right, even when I'm unhappy about the ruling.

I'm wondering how all these "states rights" conservatives don't get swallowed up in a whirlpool of their own cognitive dissonance when they decry the most recent gay marriage decision to recognize on a federal level those marriages ordained by the individual states.

Can anyone tell me the last time Congress ever repealed anything? Not "sunsetting," but actually saying "We take it back."

I saw a bunch of bloviating about "repealing" the ban on insider trading but I suspect that's just spin for a rewrite of the law itself.

I honestly can't remember Congress repealing anything in the last ten years.

gvi

WV: interdicted lencyF - there was a story in the local fiswrap yesterday about a man ticketed and fined for picking dandelion greens on public property. Can a reality program about U.S. Customs officials showing off the latest batch of interdicted lencyF be far behind?

But if they'd somehow blunder into some attempt to reference their decisions about which flavor of ice cream they like best this week as being in some vague way tied in with the concept of "is upheld or denied by the revealed precepts of the US Constitution, as lsted here", I could at least have some common frame of reference for approving or disdaining their shenanigans.

If instead the meaning of the US Constitution is to be dependent on the judicial palate of nine trained feces-flinging monkeys, we should at least pick brighter monkeys.

Covered the good/bad/constitutional thing at 8:03 above, though you will note that our opinions of the results of the feces flinging differ somewhat.

Truth is, even the monkeys I don't like tend toward a pretty accurate interpretation of those precepts you mention. If you have particular decisions in mind that are demonstrably unconstitutional and not just "bad" in your opinion, I'd be interested in the details.

The main problem with the SCOTUS decision on California's Prop 8 is that it effectively destroys the proposition system for CA (and other states). If we here in CA pass another prop and it gets challenged in court, if the AG & Gov. don't defend it, that leaves the newly approved prop with no defenders. We can all have our positions on same-sex marriage, but this is really, really bad news. Remember that SCOTUS didn't rule on the constitutionality of Prop 8, only that the defenders of Prop 8 (anti-same-sex marriage) had no standing. Of course, they left the question unanswered, if the voters/citizens of CA don't have standing in such a case, who does?